Visualizing Data at Piedmont Healthcare

This webinar will describe how Piedmont established a robust business intelligence program to support more than 130 data workers with very limited resources. Piedmont is transforming the culture from one where data lagged by months, which caused many decisions to be made on gut feel, to one where data is always at our fingertips.

Hospital execs are inundated
with informative data and monthly reports, but the leaders who often make the
best decisions to improve patient safety are the ones who step away from their
desks every so often and walk around the organization to talk with staff and
patients.

Developing a simulation-based decision support tool for anesthesia staffing

Making effective staffing decisions is of utmost importance to UF Health's Department of Anesthesiology. Yet there are currently no tools available that allows administrators to compare the quality of potential staffing solutions. In
order to facilitate the decision-making process, the Management Engineering
Consulting Services (MECS) team at UF Health developed a simulation-based
decision support tool that forecasts and quantifies the effects of staffing
decisions. This tool, which was developed
using Visual Basic with Applications in Excel, calls on methods of simulation
and mathematical modeling to determine the optimal level of staffing in
different areas of the hospital. View Presentation | Read paper

Member milestones

Please join us in congratulating the following members for their continued service and membership with Society for Health Systems.

These members have completed milestone years of service to the society in the month of April 2015.

Patient wait times in outpatient clinics are often dependent
on the availability of physicians who often try to maximize their own
time. One physician at Johns Hopkins
decided to spend time the day before patient clinic visits preparing with
residents rather than waiting for patient arrival. The changes reduced total patient wait times
by almost three hours each day and reduced clinic overtime by 28 minutes.

At Manhattan Ear, Eye and
Throat Hospital, ophthalmic procedures often have short lengths and long
turnaround times, leading to frustrated surgeons and bustling nursing staff.
With common cataract removals taking fifteen to twenty minutes, it takes longer
to prepare a room than to perform a procedure.

SHS NEWSLETTER

March 2015

The March 2015 issue of the SHS Newsletter announces the record-breaking attendance at the 2015 Healthcare Systems Process Improvement Conference recently held in Orlando, Florida; and highlights the winners of the exciting competitions. In this issue, you will also find informative articles on the progress being made in infection control in U.S. hospitals, the CEO's "ultimate" dashboard, fancy hospitals' failure to impress patients, medicare quality bonuses being wiped out by penalties, cost savings using labor productivity and expense, and customization vs. convenience when developing healthcare scheduling tools. Members with continued service and membership with the society are congratulated, and registration is open for the upcoming webinar, Visualizing Data at Piedmont Healthcare to be held at 2 p.m. April 28. Eastern time and presented by Mark Jackson, manager business intelligence, Piedmont Healthcare.